Dialogues on War. Tetyana Ogarkova and Sylvie Kauffmann

Sylvie Kauffmann: I am very happy to be able to have this conversation with you. I am told that you are in Kyiv right now. What is the situation like? How is life there today? I know that the Russian attacks on the capital have recently resumed. I was in Kyiv about a month ago and I was surprised at how normal the city looked. 

Tetyana Ogarkova: Thank you for your question, Sylvie. It is an honour to have this dialogue with you.
I am in the office of the Ukraine Crisis Media Centre, which is situated in the Ukrainian House on the European Square, in the very centre of Kyiv – a few metres away from the place where one of the Russian rockets fell on October 10. Indeed, that day changed our lives a bit. For many months, we had an impression that even though the war was there, the situation was more difficult in the east and the south of Ukraine rather than in Kyiv. We still had quite a big number of air raid alerts, but they became a part of our routine. On October 10, my husband and I were on our way back from Lviv to Kyiv, and I will never forget the moment when we arrived at the railway station and received dozens of messages from our relatives. One I remember in particular was from our eldest daughter. She said that she was all right but the sound of the explosion was so loud that she thought it happened very close to our home. 

We do not feel as secure in Kyiv as we used to a couple of weeks or months ago. The situation looks different. Kindergartens and schools are closed, and children are studying remotely. We are having blackouts all around the country. Nobody is safe.

In late February, there was a lot of panic and despair. Now we are living in this reality but we are not afraid. This feeling is different. It is anger combined with understanding that this is our life now and we do not have the right to panic. This is our way to resist.

Sylvie Kauffmann: I visited Kyiv briefly just five weeks ago. What struck me in conversations with people I met was that they were calm and poised. If there was anger, I had an impression that it was controlled. I felt very strong determination from the people I talked to. I know the Ukrainian mindset a little bit, but it still was striking for me.

I understand you have also been to Kharkiv recently. Just yesterday, I read a report in my newspaper Le Monde from one of our correspondents there, and the situation seems to be extremely difficult. Can you tell me a little bit about what you saw in Kharkiv and what were you doing there? 

Tetyana Ogarkova: It was our third trip to Kharkiv. First, we went there in June and then in August. Our objective was to see the life of the liberated territories in the Kharkiv region, which were under Russian occupation for almost six months. We also wanted to deliver our volunteer aid – a car that we bought for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. We started raising funds through our podcast, Explaining Ukraine, and Kult: Podcast with the philosopher Volodymyr Yermolenko. We use our listeners’ donations to help our military. Why are we buying cars? Because cars save lives on the frontline. Every car lasts for a couple of weeks there, so our soldiers are always in high need of vehicles. 

Kharkiv today looks much better as compared to the situation there in August. Back then, the city was constantly shelled. Nowadays, after the liberation of the Kharkiv region, missiles are still hitting the city during the night, but it is more of an exception than a rule. It does not happen every night. There are more cars and more people on the street, but life is still difficult.

Kharkiv is an incredible city. People there are extremely strong and the artistic community is very active. Artists and writers stayed in Kharkiv from the very beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion, organising humanitarian aid for civilians and military aid for Ukrainian troops. Imagine this: a writer, a painter, and a cultural activist working together in the courtyard of St. Dymytriy Church, and military cars arrive there every thirty minutes to collect the aid. Military, church, and artistic community united.

Sylvie Kauffmann: So the morale is holding well?

Tetyana Ogarkova: Indeed it is. But it is different if you travel to the recently de-occupied territories, like Izyum.

I think probably everyone knows what Izyum is now. A small town in the Kharkiv region liberated back in September, the site of mass graves. We went there three weeks after the exhumation process was over. Being there was extremely hard. Seeing all the graves, feeling a great deal of sorrow. But our presence there is very important. We were trying to understand what happened, we talked to people who were responsible for burying the dead and counting the wooden crosses on the graves. Izyum is proof of the extreme cruelty of Russians towards civilians in the region. It is a place of sorrow and disaster. 

In the upcoming months, people from the liberated territories of the Kharkiv region will not have any electricity or heating. They come regularly to check on their houses, do some repair work, and then they leave – to spend at least this winter somewhere in a safer place. This creates the impression of ghost cities and villages.

Sylvie Kauffmann: Where do they go?

Tetyana Ogarkova: Some of them go to the western regions of Ukraine, where they found their temporary refuge; others stay in parts of the Kharkiv region which were not occupied by Russia.

We also went to a village called Bezruky. It is a tiny village fifteen kilometres away from the Russian border. It was never occupied by the Russian army, but it was constantly shelled in March and April. There we met a family who on June 21 lost their eight-year-old girl, Margaryta.

At the moment of the shelling, little Margaryta was in the garden reading a book. It was an extremely calm day, and the bomb appeared out of nowhere and killed her and her aunt. We met the grandmother who lost both her daughter and granddaughter in a second. Their house is now empty. Margaryta’s stuff is still there. The family left. Even though the damage to the house itself could be easily repaired, it is difficult to live in a place where such a tragedy occurred. 

It is a huge trauma when your house, your world, is destroyed. I do hope people will come back. But they need security, electricity, and, most importantly, time to heal their wounds.

Sylvie Kauffmann: This leads us to the issue of crime and punishment. Izyum, just like Bucha, is now a symbol of Russian war crimes. How do you feel about the issue of collective responsibility? It was raised during a discussion about the visa ban for Russian citizens in the EU.

Tetyana Ogarkova: A lot depends on the perspective, on the place from where you are talking. As a European, you think about what happened in Europe after WWI and how the defeat and humiliation that Germany had experienced led to the much greater horrors of WWII. When Emmanuel Macron was talking about not humiliating Russia, he was saying that from the European perspective.

Not a lot of Ukrainians can accept discussions like this without emotion. This is natural because people are in a lot of trauma. For us, Ukrainians, Russia represents aggressors committing war crimes every day against our people. This feeling is not abstract; it is very concrete and personal. In this war, we all have lost someone or something.

Here in Ukraine, we have quite a different perspective on the issue of the collective responsibility of Russians and the visa ban. What irritates Ukrainians? Expressions like ‘Putin’s war’ or the ‘Kremlin’s war’, which indicate that only Putin or the Kremlin commits crimes, and Russian people are innocent. What we see, unfortunately, is that Russian people do participate in this war, and millions of them are silent. 

Since the start of the mobilisation, almost a million Russians have left the country. Lots of them are in Georgia, Turkey, Finland, and Kazakhstan. The problem is that we do not see these people organising any manifestations against the war. They are against mobilisation but not against the war per se. Based on sociological polls, we know that Russians either support it or are indifferent. Our attitude is not to tolerate that anymore. We understand that a lot of Russians are waiting for the moment when Putin’s regime will be over. But the problem is that Ukrainians are paying for their silence and passivity with our blood and losses every day. We are having this battle in their place.

Sylvie Kauffmann: This is a very good point. Their passivity is very close to complicity. 

Tetyana Ogarkova: And what is your opinion?

Sylvie Kauffmann: I thought the mobilisation would provoke some kind of reaction. And to some point, it did. But the reaction was mostly fleeing, not fighting. I understand the fear factor, but I also agree with you on the fact that we have not heard from hundreds of thousands of Russians who left the country. They could have been active, they could have organised networks of resistance abroad. This is very important, it is something we have to analyse on our part.

It is very true that Germany was tried and Nazi leaders were tried and condemned for their crimes while the Soviet Union was not. It was a totalitarian regime, and after the Cold War, we thought that it had come to an end. That was a big collective mistake of ours.

Ukraine is a big factor in revealing this reality to the Western world. This is one of the lessons of this terrible war that we have learnt.

Tetyana Ogarkova: Here in Ukraine, we do feel that the image of our country abroad has changed. There is a lot of attention from foreign media, intellectuals, and people who are supporting us. What do you think about this development? Do you think that the EU as a formal institution which has granted Ukraine candidate status will continue along this path? Do you think French, German, and Italian people perceive Ukrainians as Europeans today more than they did a year or two ago?

Sylvie Kauffmann: Definitely. There has been a great change in the way we look at Ukrainians. In France, the Ukrainian community was not very big. So, I am not sure French people knew a lot about Ukraine and Ukrainians. Now they definitely know much more and are more interested. There is a lot of admiration and positive feelings about Ukrainians. The French, unlike the Germans, are interested in military affairs. And I think they are impressed by the way Ukrainians fight. 

On the EU issue, granting Ukraine candidate status was a very logical step. But an extremely complicated procedure awaits your country in the future. When the war ends, I think we will have to find a way to accelerate Ukrainian access to the EU and its integration. There will be a lot of work to do, even in terms of reconstruction. But we think it is morally and politically right to open the EU to Ukraine because it deserves it and also because it will offer Ukraine extra protection. Ukraine is part of the European family, and we have to demonstrate it to Russia.

A big challenge awaits us in Western Europe this winter. You are facing a much greater challenge of your own – the winter without heating and electricity, under constant shelling during the full-scale war. But we are less tough in Western Europe. It is up to our leadership, our politicians, media, intellectuals, union and civil society leaders to make people understand that we also have to pay for this fight for freedom and that it will have its cost.